INCIDENTAL ASPECTS OF THE GROUSE - MOOR.
WE recently showed the economical propriety of grouse- moors, which every year draw into Scotland 2300,000 that would probably be spent abroad if the attraction of sport were removed. We were then looking at the matter from the point of view of the cool-headed patriot, who perceives that such a sum circulated in the Highlands every twelve months is enormously more beneficial than allowing the natives to starve sentimentally on plots of heath and rock, could possibly be. We also, in a general way, acquiesce in the delighted approval with which the grouse-moor is regarded by the Londoner. The late Mr. Charles Mills did not exceed legiti- mate hyperbole when he declared that the first scent of peat- moss which he inhaled on his Scottish moor was worth 21,000. In very important respects, then, the grouse-heath is twice blest. It, is not, however, an altogether unmitigated blessing. If Mr. Matthew Arnold had been with us, he would have written to show that it tends to materialise one class of society, and that it certainly vulgarises another. It tends to debase the people of the Highlands. We have no sympathy with the agitators who seek to tempt the imaginative Celts into a narrow local patriotism that could be cultivated only at the cost of communal wretchedness. On the other band, we should have willingly echoed Mr. Matthew Arnold if he had pointed out that a poor people like the Highlanders cannot long remain amid the circumstances of the Highlands to-day with- out having their spirit of independence superseded by one of servility. We are not speaking at random. The present writer is familiar with the Highlands. Any one with the same know- ledge must have been struck by the change of social feeling that has been rapidly passing over them. The independent Celt, who used to regard the intruding Sassenach with proud indifference, is now his most obedient servant, dancing about him, cap in hand, with the exulting humility that overcomes the Cockney in a crowd when Buffalo Bill or a barbarian monargh condescends to let the rabble gape and gaze at him. This new subservience is not afflicting only the lower and the middle classes in the Highlands. We have actually heard women belonging to ancient Highland families gleefully gossiping about "the gentry" quartered "at the big house." "The gentry" might be a manure merchant and his family, or a tailor and his suite, or a soap-boiler and his retinue. Their sole and sufficient claim to the title was possession of the subjugating money-bags. The gentry," too, even those of them that have pedigrees to flaunt, instead of money to spend that was made in "pigs" or in manure, are vulgarised by the new vogue. They altogether lose their heads when- ever they get within measurable distance of what they and their journalistic sympathisers call "the Glorious Twelfth." They maunder excitedly about "the Festival of St. Grouse." Now, what must be the state of mind of the men who can deal in twaddling phrases of that sort ? Who is the Saint, they or the grouse ? Of what does the Festival con- sist, of slaughtering or of being slaughtered? We base our accusation, however, upon something more than the silliness of our friends' exuberant twaddle. Nowadays, even the highest society goes forth to the moors in a mood of flagrant vulgarity. It has little concern for the tranquil joys of life on the fragrant heather, or for the delight of mountaineering. Its main interest is centred on the probabilities as to who will beat the record of Lord Walsingbam's big bag. Its state of mind may be fairly represented by a passage from the Daily Telegraph's prean on "the Glorious Twelfth." Up to August 28th, 1872, the biggest feat in a single day was the slaughter of 842 grouse on the Bluberhouses Moor, in York- shire. "It was currently reported at the time, among Lord Walsingham's friends, that the noble lessee of Bluberhouses Moor would never be satisfied until he had bagged a thousand grouse in a single day." Accordingly, on August 30th, 1888,
"the noble lessee" "contrived to lay low 1,070 birds in thirteen consecutive hours." He is happy now, and the idol of grouse- shooters; but if it should chance that the genius who invented a machine to kill the Chicago pigs at so many the hour devises a " multiplex " fowling-piece which breaks the record, we shall probably have Lord Walsingham resolving to slay a hundred grouse a minute, and a " society " mob applauding "the noble sportsman." We cannot see any essential distinction between the mental attitude of the great grouse-slaughterers and that of the bold women who appear in middle-class Bays- water drawing-rooms outvying each other in the gross glare of jewels. The one class is as vulgar as the other.
" Society " can cultivate this vulgarity only at a serious peril to itself and to the State. Just as the whole community of Germany lost its head fatally when the St. Vitus dancers came into vogue, "society" in England will become tyrannically irresponsible if the tendency we have pointed to is not checked. When an aristocracy loses repose in too keen excitement over a favourite pursuit, it becomes a peril to the State. That is just what in England it has become. Embodied in the Field Sports Protection Association, it assembled in a Bond Street hotel two or three weeks ago, and passed a resolution the like of which, at the instance of a mob of pot-house Radicals, would have caused the ordinary old-fashioned Conservative to swear once more that the country was going to the dogs. Three of the most eminent Judges in England had decided that the sale of foreign partridges and pheasants in this country was not unlawful. They did so on the obvious con- sideration that our Game Laws were devised to protect British game alone, and that there was no good reason why the citizens of Britain should not have foreign game during our close time if Russia, or Norway, or any other country, was willing to supply the market. Will it be believed that, after a speech by a "noble sportsman" who denounced the Judges as having regarded "neither the spirit nor the letter of the law," the gentlemen of England unanimously resolved to agitate for such an amendment of the statute as would make the work of preserving their game easier by the abolition of a recognised trade ? Not a single man in the room perceived that the Game Laws would be made more than ever obnoxious to the people by such an insolent demand. Not a single man of them per- ceived that, as in the eye of the masses the Field Sports Pro- tection Association incidentally represents Conservative society, the resolution was laying that party, which is the ultimate defender of the rights of property, open to severe and popular and proper criticism. Not one of them anticipated the ridicule that would be justly poured upon them when the Prime Minister, who, being a political economist, would at once see their demand to be monstrous, treated their agitation with disdain. All this came of that new joy in big things, and in rough-and-ready means towards the attainment of them, which has afflicted the masses in London for a decade, and has at length vulgarised the classes. After all, it is a simple matter. How could we expect good taste or sound sense from persons whose delirious delight in slaughter finds what it imagines to be ornate expression in "the Festival of St. Grouse"?
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